A Fashion Sensibility: Clothing and the Politics of Memory through Ghanaian Photography, 1950s–Present

A Fashion Sensibility: Clothing and the Politics of Memory through Ghanaian Photography, 1950s to the Present examines Ghanaians’ enduring attentiveness to fashion and proposes a critical rethinking of fashion photography by considering the genre through African aesthetics within a global context. Contrary to previous accounts of photography in Ghana, this study argues that Ghanaian fashion photography is central to the reimagining of knowledge production among contemporary Ghanaian artist-photographers Prince Gyasi-Nyantakyi, Carlos Idun-Tawiah, and Zohra Opoku—and provides insight into the formation and sensation of these artists across art and fashion worlds in Ghana and beyond. For more than a century, Ghanaians have employed fashion to express social commentary, while photography has been a crucial medium for fashion’s production, distribution, and consumption within global “fashion systems.” This interdependence became particularly evident in the mid-twentieth century, when the photographic documentation of sartorial practices, influenced by political and everyday life, contributed to photography’s popularity and democratization in Ghana and West Africa. In the twenty-first century, fashion photography has emerged as a social and political import embedded into the quotidian dimensions of African life, playing a vital role in documenting and reworking modernity and collective memory within African urbanisms, and functioning as a barometer and apparatus of social impact in Ghana. Fashion photography is not exclusive to Ghana, yet early Ghanaian practitioners established the visual standard for articulating the broader “African personality” through fashion, a standard that resonated in the region and abroad. This fashion-forward aesthetic—introduced through a distinct fashion sensibility and sartorial optics brought Ghana into the international spotlight and remains palpably active and pertinent today. Although fashion’s influence on the development of African photography is undeniable, its confluence with the field has remained largely unexplored in canonical art history.

Author dc:creator

• Leslie Wooden (24400277)

• Art History
• African Studies
• Black Studies
• Fashion Studies

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright
• Open Access after 2028-05-01

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.25417/uic.32995322.v1

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:figshare.com:article/32995322